What is special about Freie Universität Berlin?

Freie Universität Berlin has around 100 partnerships with scientific facilities all around the world, with additional 330 university partnerships within the framework of the mobility network Erasmus and 45 other institutional partnerships.

Every year, around 600 academics from abroad contribute to the diversity of teaching and research at Freie Universität. The five liaison offices that Freie Universität has established abroad since 2007 - in Cairo, New Delhi, Beijing, Eastern Europe (Tbilisi, Georgia), and São Paulo - point the way to a new quality of international cooperation.

Freie Universität Berlin has direct exchange agreements with more than 80 universities. Around 20% of all students are from abroad.

Freie Universität is one of eleven German universities that have been successful in all three funding lines of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments and whose future concepts will be funded. As a result of the latest competition among German universities, the "Excellence Strategy", it will receive permanent funding from 2019 onwards as part of the Berlin University Alliance. The Berlin Alliance is made up of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Technische Universität Berlin, as well as Charité as the joint medical faculty of Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität.

In the most recent ranking by Times Higher Education magazine, Freie Universität was listed among the best eight German universities in 2023.

As a comprehensive university, Freie Universität offers more than 150 degree programs in a broad range of subjects at a total of eleven departments and four central institutes. Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the joint medical faculty of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The breadth of research in the humanities at Freie Universität Berlin, which is unique in Germany, is brought together under the umbrella of the Dahlem Humanities Center. A special feature is the large number of "small" subjects such as Arabic and Jewish Studies.

As an internationally renowned research university, Freie Universität Berlin is part of the broad and differentiated German research and innovation landscape. In addition to the universities, the institutions of the four large non-university research organisations contribute to this in particular.

Dahlem Research School (DRS), forms the umbrella at Freie Universität Berlin under which outstanding structured doctoral programmes are brought together. With the establishment of the DRS, Freie Universität Berlin has embarked on a new path in graduate education nationwide in order to offer young researchers the best conditions for their academic development.

Freie Universität offers a comprehensive range of counseling and support services for its students. Besides Academic Advising and Psychological Counseling, students can also turn to the departmental advisors and mentoring offices for help. The Representative for Students with DSpecial Needs and Chronic Illnesses, the Support Points of the Mental Wellbeing Project, the Dual Career & Family Service, the University Sports Center, and the advisory bodies of the Berlin Student Union are just a few of the many go-to points for information and support.

The student associations can also be a source of help during your time at university. Almost every subject and institute, respectively, has a student association. There, students from higher semesters come together to lobby for the needs and interests of students in higher education policy. Furthermore, there are also other student groups that represent political interests, offer counseling, or run cafés on campus.

In addition to the diversity of higher education institutions, Berlin also offers a broad spectrum of cultural centers and activities, formidable museums, historically significant places and other sights and attractions.